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Hello Fellow Scrapbloggers!

So guess what? Today is November 4th and we just finished Halloween, so now we can focus on getting ready for the holiday season! As creative people we know the importance of getting a head start on holidays. To feed your competitive spirits and get you in a creative frame of mind, we are announcing today our 2nd Annual Best Scrapblog Holiday Card Contest.

If you participated last year, you remember all the totally AMAZING scrapblog holiday cards that were created. Check out all the entries from last year here. With so many great stickers, backgrounds, themes and kits - we simply cannot wait to see what you come up with!

So here’s how you participate:
1. Create your Scrapblog Holiday Card. - The holiday you choose is totally up to you! Maybe your holiday is Halloween, Christmas, Hanukkah or Thanksgiving?
2. Your card must be 3 Scrapblog pages - 1 for the front of the card, 1 for the inside top and 1 for the inside bottom.
3. Save and publish your scrapblog publicly. We need to see your creation!
4. Tag your entry HOLIDAYS09

Your entry must be created before midnight on November 13, 2009. The Scrapblog staff will vote on all the entries and choose the best THREE entries as winners. The winners will receive 25 copies of their Scrapblog Holiday Card!

Have Fun!!

Cheers!
Rebecca

Hello Fellow Scrapbloggers!

Halloween is THIS Saturday people and if you haven’t prepared the perfect spooky event, here are a couple of ideas to add a little something extra to your party using Scrapblog.

Every great party starts with great invitations. I used stickers and backgrounds from Pebbles, Inc. Those of you that know my style, know that simple is not usually a way to describe it. However, I love the clean, classic design from Pebbles and I think it works really well for these projects. If these aren’t your style, we have hundreds and hundreds of stickers to choose from.

Don’t forget to add all the details about your party so your guests know the details. When you are finished with your invite, you can print it from home, order postcards from scrapblog, post it to your Facebook event wall, or email it to all your ghosts (I mean guests!).

Now that everyone is invited, I want to show you a quick and easy party game that you can create in Scrapblog and print right from your home printer. I LOVE playing pin the tail on the donkey, but that doesn’t really work too well for Halloween, so I decided on pin the tail on the black cat. This cat is one of the most popular stickers in our library and he really looks upset that his tail is missing! To hide his tail, I used an oval shape in same color as the background and placed it over his tail until it disappeared. Ledya was happy to play my game with me after I printed it.

Once the party is over, you can send out great thank you cards. Just design 3 scrapblog pages (1 for the front, 1 for the inside top and 1 for the inside bottom). Order your cards and call your party a success!

I hope this has sparked some ideas for you to create the spookiest, best Halloween ever!!!

Rebecca

Hello Scrapbloggers! My name is Beth and I have a blog about everything from crafting and home decorating to chocolate and being a mom. I recently wrote an article about a calendar I created using Scrapblog and Rebecca invited me to be a guest blogger. I hope you enjoy this project and send us a link if you try it for yourself!

Are you one of the many that think Scrapblog is only useful for creating digital scrapbooks? If you answered yes, then think again my friend! Today, I am going to take you through a step-by-step tutorial and show you how to use scrapblog to create your very own personalized erasable calendar. All you will need for this project is a computer, printer, two sheets of legal- sized paper, an 11×14 frame, a dry-erase marker, and some imagination. Let’s get this project started!

1. Log onto scrapblog.com and set up your account. After you are all set with your username and password, click on “Create New Scrapblog”. (You can see this in the picture below underneath my Halloween collage. It is a cream colored box with a plus sign next to it.)

2. You can either start with a theme or a blank page. For beginners, I recommend playing around with a theme in order to get a feel for the program. If you are adventurous and are saying “theme-schmeme”, then plunge on ahead and click on “Start with a Blank Page”.

3. This is what your blank page will look like, very…uh…blank. On the left hand side, you will see lots of fun buttons to click on. My favorite button is the “sticker” button. Go ahead and click on the stickers to see your options.

4. In the search bar, you can type in any word or theme you are searching for. Want something in a certain color scheme? On the left side you will see it says Category, Color, Style. Click on the color tab and choose your Roy G. Biv. I want to make a fall themed header for my calendar, so below I typed “autumn” in the search box. Once you see something you like, simply double click on the sticker and it will be added to your page selection. Many of the stickers are free, but many come at a minimal cost in the currency of credits. You will need to purchase credits in order to access these stickers. I’m using some of the new stickers from Pink Paislee.

5.

Once you are finished searching for stickers, click done and it will take you back to your page. Now the fun really begins! Here I have started a new page for my background. You can also find backgrounds in scrapblog, but I often like to create my own with the stickers. Each little box that you see below is an individual sticker that has been resized to fit on one page. You can see I am resizing the red “Thanksgiving Joy” sticker to fit in my empty space.

6. Once you are finished with your project, you will click save, publish, and then “export as jpeg” to save it to your computer. In the picture below, you can see where I’ve highlighted “export as jpeg” under “File”.

7. When you export, you will need to download your picture and then Save (not open) it to your computer.

8. I am now ready to make the header for my calendar. In Microsoft Word, I click on “Page Setup” to change it to legal size and then I mess with my margins to make them as large as possible.

9. I have inserted my Autumn collage into Microsoft Word, but it is not the size I want.

10. I resize it to around 3.5 inches, copy it, and paste it to cover the entire length of the page.

11. Looking good!

12. Next, I insert another Scrapblog picture. Don’t panic if you see a bunch of white surrounding your image. Just crop it down and get rid of all that white.

13. Here I have placed my images where I want them, added my family name, and I am ready to print the header for my calendar!

14. To make the calendar, I simply open a new Word document. Again, I change the layout size to “legal” and make a 7×4 table. I type the names of the week across the top, print it out on a legal sized piece of paper, and call it complete!

15. Now I just pop open my 11×14 frame and stick in my calendar and November header.

Hello Scrapbloggers!

My name is Jeanine DeOre and along with my friend Jen Reed we are the designers behind the Kristy Valshan store in Scrapblog. Thanks to Rebecca for giving me the chance to show you a project using some of the new products in the Kristy Valshan marketplace store. We’ve recently added two new themes Back 2 School and Eccentric. In addition, there are 60 new stickers and over 30 new backgrounds in the store for you to enjoy. I can’t wait to see what you create with them!

The project I will show you today is how to create two binder covers for your child’s school year. One is for younger grades and one is for older children. Customizable binders like the one pictured below can be found at your local office supply store. This particular binder is the three ring variety and you can add divider pages to organize the content inside.

1. Design your cover page in Scrapblog:

Here’s an idea for younger kids. You can include all the things you want to remember about the year, such as your child’s grade, teacher’s name, and favorite things about the school year. I love how you can so easily add your own text and pictures to get a truly custom page.

For my older child, I wanted to give him something “cool” like the front of a notebook full of doodles. Our new backgrounds are perfect and I added some of his school photos so I remember that cute innocent smile for years to come.

2. Download your page and print:

You can print from home or send it out to your local photo printer.

3. Add the back & spine:

For the spine you can just use a background and cut it and for the back of the binder you can do a different page (or use one of the covers i did for the front and the other for the back).

When the kids come home from school they can hole punch their papers and put them in the binder. You can put the school calendar as the first page too and keep the binder as a keepsake. Add dividers for art, school work and report cards. It’s a great way to keep all those papers from the school year organized.

I want to see what you create with this theme so tag your creations BACK2SCHOOL.

Have fun!

Jeanine

Hello Fellow Scrapbloggers!

Today I have another fab project to share with you. This one is great for anyone with an online presence. Here at Scrapblog we promise “endless possibilities” and to show you a little bit more about what we mean, today we are going to show you how to make a creative avatar.

What is an avatar? Here’s the definition found on dictionary.com:
“-a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet.”

So, if you are online and want a creative way to show off your photo, Scrapblog can offer you “endless possiblities” to do so! This project is pretty simple all you need to get started is a photo of yourself and scrapblog.com.

Step One:
Click Start Creating from the Scrapblog.com homepage.

Step Two:
Once inside the builder, upload your photo

Step Three:
To make the canvas a square, select a shape and cover enough of the background to simulate a square shape.

Grab your backgrounds and stickers that match your personal style. Here are three examples:

Step Four:
Save and Publish your finished page

Step Five:
Export as a Jpeg

Step Six:
Crop the photo

Step Seven:
Upload as your avatar

Step Eight:
Make your friends jealous!

Have fun creating and show off those creative avatars!

Rebecca